Mary Sisney's Blog - Posts Tagged "herman-cain"
White Women, Please: Victims and Villains V
The Weinstein whiners (white women are as good at whining as black women are at rolling our eyes and giving facial attitude) remind me of an incident that I described in my memoir. My second officemate at Cal Poly, a southern white woman fourteen years my senior, a woman who had evolved from a devoted Catholic mother of four to a crusading Marxist-feminist before we met, was whining about her bad job evaluation. Like too many converts, this former Catholic was a missionary, trying to convert everyone else, including her students, to her way of thinking, so the men in the department couldn't stand her. They punished her with an inappropriately negative (considering her teaching ability and hard work on department committees) evaluation. When she first started complaining to me, I was sympathetic because I hate unfair treatment, but then she went on too long in her whiny voice, declaring that she had never been treated so badly in her life. At that point, I shut her down. Glaring at her as if she were wearing a sheet and carrying a burning cross, I barked (my husky voice is incapable of whining), "I have! I've been treated a lot worse than anything that's happened to me in this department." This smart southern woman knew exactly what I meant and immediately calmed down. She understood Toni Morrison's message: Black people have the high moral ground when it comes to suffering and oppression. We did not enslave or lynch white people.
While white women had annoyed me by voting for a pussy-grabbing, racist maniac instead of a competent, sane woman, I appreciated that they immediately went to work to resist him. I knew from working with white women in my department, including my second officemate, that they are effective organizers, and as Mitch McConnell pointed out, they can be persistent. A white woman does not mind manipulating and badgering men, women, and probably children to recruit them to their causes. They are also obviously more experienced at dealing with crazy white men than we nonwhite women are. Helping me forgive the stupid white women who voted for a crazy, racist pig were the heroic Republican Senators from Alaska and Maine who stood with Vietnam hero McCain against draft dodger Trump and his enablers in the Senate to protect the ACA. Then Heather Heyer joined Viola Liuzzo as a martyr for civil rights, and I decided that nonwhite women willing to serve (word choice deliberate) Trump were much worse than KellyAnne Conway and the most obnoxious Sarah since Palin--Ms. Huckabee Sanders. I turned my ire on reality star Omarosa, U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, and probably the worst nonwhite woman in the world, Elaine Chao. Any nonwhite woman who can marry Mitch McConnell and serve under (word choice deliberate) Donald Trump is really an old white man in nonwhite women's clothing.
Then the Weinstein whiners started whining, and I went to war with white women. I was triggered by two white women talking on MSNBC. The co-creator of "The Daily Show," Lizz Winstead, and the anchor of the 11:00 a.m. (2:00 Eastern) MSNBC show, Trump abuse victim Katy Tur, were discussing Weinstein's dirty deeds when they decided to call out Obama and Hillary Clinton. I almost lost my lunch. Being able to sound off on Twitter, Goodreads, Facebook, and Google+ had stopped me from screaming at the television until Trump's nomination and then election. Now I occasionally have to scream. I screamed at the two smug white women who were claiming that Obama and Clinton had to say something or they would lose credibility: "Well, maybe if you white bitches had voted for them (I knew they probably had, but their sisters hadn't), they'd say something." "What did y'all say about birtherism?" I bellowed. Later, I mean-tweeted both women, telling Lizz that I couldn't find her comments on birtherism, Trayvon Martin, Charleston, and Charlottesville. I looked for such comments before I tweeted, so I knew that if she said anything on those issues, her comments didn't make much noise. I tweeted Katy to say that she should have asked Lizz about her comments on racism and to make the point about voting. I said that maybe if a black woman complained about Weinstein, Obama and Clinton would speak out since we voted for them. I also suggested that she should have asked Lizz about Emmett Till and the Scottsboro Boys. Maybe because she's a humorist, Lizz engages with her mean-tweeters, so she told me to look harder. Oh, no, she didn't tweet back to me! I let her have it, pointing out that Hillary lost not only because white women voted for Trump but also because all of their whining made Hillary look either weak or unnatural since she wasn't as weak as other white women. I said that the first female President would probably be nonwhite because white women are seen as too weak to be Commander in Chief. I may have told her (or maybe it was Katy) about black women cleaning the homes and taking care of the children of white women and about white men using white women as weapons against black men, lynching and castrating them, while the white men raped black women. And I might have mentioned Strom Thurmond's half-black daughter and Arnold S.'s half-Latino son. Ms. Lizz, as I called her in my mean-tweets, is as smart as my second officemate was. She meekly tweeted "Okay" in response to my tirade. Maybe she didn't realize I am a black woman until I unleashed that twitter storm. Katy didn't respond to my tweets, but the next day discussed Weinstein with two non-white women. However, they were just analysts, not so-called victims.
Besides the fact that the Weinstein scandal was taking attention away from more serious issues--natural disasters in Puerto Rico, California, Texas, and Florida, and unnatural disasters in Las Vegas and Washington, D.C.--this trendy sexual assault discussion set me off because it reminded me of my second least favorite person on earth after Trump--Gloria Allred. About two weeks before Weinsteingate, I read a profile of the bigot-in- liberals' clothing. The writer made a point of telling us that Gloria taught in mostly black high schools and wrote her English Honors thesis on black writers, including Ralph Ellison. But there was no mention of the race of most of Cosby's accusers or of Tiger Woods' mistresses. I wrote a letter to the editor (it was not published in this week's issue), pointing out that Allred's crusade against black men who have sex with white women, not just Woods and Cosby but also OJ Simpson and Herman Cain, may have been triggered by a character in INVISIBLE MAN named Sybil, a white woman who wanted invisible man to rape her because she had dreamed of being raped by a black man since she was a child. When I taught that novel, some white women were offended and defensive when they encountered Sybil. I didn't include this point in my letter, but I also wonder if her experiences with disrespectful, rowdy black students, especially males, caused her to be subconsciously hostile toward them. I taught at Evanston Township High School for one year; it's a highly ranked, mostly white suburban high school, but I encountered a few unruly black boys and girls there who helped me decide that I preferred teaching college. Maybe Gloria decided she'd prefer putting black men in jail, extorting them for money (Tiger didn't commit a crime), or ruining their careers to trying to teach them how to read and write while they hazed her.
Since I can't tweet (or tweet about) every white woman who annoys me with her whining or her attacks on black men, let me address them the way I addressed the white Trump supporters in an earlier post (12/4/16): White women, you are not the primary victims in America. You have to get behind black men, black women, all Latinos, all Native Americans, all Asians, all turban- and hijab-wearing people with pigmentation, all other people of color or people who appear to be of color, as well as poor white people in the most oppressed Americans line. Also, white women, being a victim is not empowering, and joining a lynch mob is not brave. And, oh, white women, if you take hush money, you should stay hushed or give the money back. If you had been a nonwhite woman, you might have done what the nonwhite foreign model did, go straight to the police and then wear a wire to try to build a criminal case against the powerful pervert. Finally, white women, learn what working-class black women already know. There is no free ride; everything has a price. You can't hang around powerful white men, hoping to take a shortcut to the top, without something bad happening. Sucking up to power to move to the front of the line might be dangerous; you can be sucked into a "traumatic" experience. If you want to make it in any town, do what those of us who are not white women have to do--work hard.
Before Trump was elected, I tried to tell women that all the whining about sexual assault (the Emily Doe nonsense and the overreaction to the "Access Hollywood" tapes) would make it harder for Hillary to win, and as Trump likes to say, "I was right." I'm also right in being disgusted that there wasn't as much outrage expressed over Trump's birther lies as over his bragging about sexual assault. All Americans, but especially the media, should be ashamed that he wasn't demonized off television as soon as he started claiming that our first (half)-black President wasn't really born in Hawaii. So, Americans, let's all say together, "America's original sin was not sexism; it was and still is racism." Let's also say, "The worst people in the world are racists."
While white women had annoyed me by voting for a pussy-grabbing, racist maniac instead of a competent, sane woman, I appreciated that they immediately went to work to resist him. I knew from working with white women in my department, including my second officemate, that they are effective organizers, and as Mitch McConnell pointed out, they can be persistent. A white woman does not mind manipulating and badgering men, women, and probably children to recruit them to their causes. They are also obviously more experienced at dealing with crazy white men than we nonwhite women are. Helping me forgive the stupid white women who voted for a crazy, racist pig were the heroic Republican Senators from Alaska and Maine who stood with Vietnam hero McCain against draft dodger Trump and his enablers in the Senate to protect the ACA. Then Heather Heyer joined Viola Liuzzo as a martyr for civil rights, and I decided that nonwhite women willing to serve (word choice deliberate) Trump were much worse than KellyAnne Conway and the most obnoxious Sarah since Palin--Ms. Huckabee Sanders. I turned my ire on reality star Omarosa, U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, and probably the worst nonwhite woman in the world, Elaine Chao. Any nonwhite woman who can marry Mitch McConnell and serve under (word choice deliberate) Donald Trump is really an old white man in nonwhite women's clothing.
Then the Weinstein whiners started whining, and I went to war with white women. I was triggered by two white women talking on MSNBC. The co-creator of "The Daily Show," Lizz Winstead, and the anchor of the 11:00 a.m. (2:00 Eastern) MSNBC show, Trump abuse victim Katy Tur, were discussing Weinstein's dirty deeds when they decided to call out Obama and Hillary Clinton. I almost lost my lunch. Being able to sound off on Twitter, Goodreads, Facebook, and Google+ had stopped me from screaming at the television until Trump's nomination and then election. Now I occasionally have to scream. I screamed at the two smug white women who were claiming that Obama and Clinton had to say something or they would lose credibility: "Well, maybe if you white bitches had voted for them (I knew they probably had, but their sisters hadn't), they'd say something." "What did y'all say about birtherism?" I bellowed. Later, I mean-tweeted both women, telling Lizz that I couldn't find her comments on birtherism, Trayvon Martin, Charleston, and Charlottesville. I looked for such comments before I tweeted, so I knew that if she said anything on those issues, her comments didn't make much noise. I tweeted Katy to say that she should have asked Lizz about her comments on racism and to make the point about voting. I said that maybe if a black woman complained about Weinstein, Obama and Clinton would speak out since we voted for them. I also suggested that she should have asked Lizz about Emmett Till and the Scottsboro Boys. Maybe because she's a humorist, Lizz engages with her mean-tweeters, so she told me to look harder. Oh, no, she didn't tweet back to me! I let her have it, pointing out that Hillary lost not only because white women voted for Trump but also because all of their whining made Hillary look either weak or unnatural since she wasn't as weak as other white women. I said that the first female President would probably be nonwhite because white women are seen as too weak to be Commander in Chief. I may have told her (or maybe it was Katy) about black women cleaning the homes and taking care of the children of white women and about white men using white women as weapons against black men, lynching and castrating them, while the white men raped black women. And I might have mentioned Strom Thurmond's half-black daughter and Arnold S.'s half-Latino son. Ms. Lizz, as I called her in my mean-tweets, is as smart as my second officemate was. She meekly tweeted "Okay" in response to my tirade. Maybe she didn't realize I am a black woman until I unleashed that twitter storm. Katy didn't respond to my tweets, but the next day discussed Weinstein with two non-white women. However, they were just analysts, not so-called victims.
Besides the fact that the Weinstein scandal was taking attention away from more serious issues--natural disasters in Puerto Rico, California, Texas, and Florida, and unnatural disasters in Las Vegas and Washington, D.C.--this trendy sexual assault discussion set me off because it reminded me of my second least favorite person on earth after Trump--Gloria Allred. About two weeks before Weinsteingate, I read a profile of the bigot-in- liberals' clothing. The writer made a point of telling us that Gloria taught in mostly black high schools and wrote her English Honors thesis on black writers, including Ralph Ellison. But there was no mention of the race of most of Cosby's accusers or of Tiger Woods' mistresses. I wrote a letter to the editor (it was not published in this week's issue), pointing out that Allred's crusade against black men who have sex with white women, not just Woods and Cosby but also OJ Simpson and Herman Cain, may have been triggered by a character in INVISIBLE MAN named Sybil, a white woman who wanted invisible man to rape her because she had dreamed of being raped by a black man since she was a child. When I taught that novel, some white women were offended and defensive when they encountered Sybil. I didn't include this point in my letter, but I also wonder if her experiences with disrespectful, rowdy black students, especially males, caused her to be subconsciously hostile toward them. I taught at Evanston Township High School for one year; it's a highly ranked, mostly white suburban high school, but I encountered a few unruly black boys and girls there who helped me decide that I preferred teaching college. Maybe Gloria decided she'd prefer putting black men in jail, extorting them for money (Tiger didn't commit a crime), or ruining their careers to trying to teach them how to read and write while they hazed her.
Since I can't tweet (or tweet about) every white woman who annoys me with her whining or her attacks on black men, let me address them the way I addressed the white Trump supporters in an earlier post (12/4/16): White women, you are not the primary victims in America. You have to get behind black men, black women, all Latinos, all Native Americans, all Asians, all turban- and hijab-wearing people with pigmentation, all other people of color or people who appear to be of color, as well as poor white people in the most oppressed Americans line. Also, white women, being a victim is not empowering, and joining a lynch mob is not brave. And, oh, white women, if you take hush money, you should stay hushed or give the money back. If you had been a nonwhite woman, you might have done what the nonwhite foreign model did, go straight to the police and then wear a wire to try to build a criminal case against the powerful pervert. Finally, white women, learn what working-class black women already know. There is no free ride; everything has a price. You can't hang around powerful white men, hoping to take a shortcut to the top, without something bad happening. Sucking up to power to move to the front of the line might be dangerous; you can be sucked into a "traumatic" experience. If you want to make it in any town, do what those of us who are not white women have to do--work hard.
Before Trump was elected, I tried to tell women that all the whining about sexual assault (the Emily Doe nonsense and the overreaction to the "Access Hollywood" tapes) would make it harder for Hillary to win, and as Trump likes to say, "I was right." I'm also right in being disgusted that there wasn't as much outrage expressed over Trump's birther lies as over his bragging about sexual assault. All Americans, but especially the media, should be ashamed that he wasn't demonized off television as soon as he started claiming that our first (half)-black President wasn't really born in Hawaii. So, Americans, let's all say together, "America's original sin was not sexism; it was and still is racism." Let's also say, "The worst people in the world are racists."
2020, Bye! Worst Year Ever
When I wrote my review of the year and decade last year, I said that 2016 had been the worst year of my life and the teens were the worst decade. I also said that the fact that I found ten dollars exactly one year ago today suggested that 2020 was going to be a better year than 2019 and that the twenties would be a better decade. It’s too early to reject that last prediction, but last year (I love saying that) was definitely not a better year than 2019. In fact, sorry, 2016, you need to hand your “Worst Year Ever” crown to 2020. Of course, one prediction did come true. I said of the new year “There will be more deaths because we’re all growing older, and we all must die.” By “more deaths” I didn’t mean more deaths than in 2019. I also didn’t mean that more old people would die because of a pandemic or that three of the oldest surviving actors/entertainers—98-year-old Carl Reiner, 103-year-old Kirk Douglas, and 104-year old Olivia de Havilland would finally die. I meant that some older family members and friends would probably die in 2020.
I did lose a family member after the pandemic prevented us from gathering to celebrate the lives of our lost family and friends. But he wasn’t old. He was 51, the youngest child and the only son (he had three older sisters) of the first cousin who died on New Year’s Day in 2019. Bill died not from Covid (I notice that some obituaries will now mention that the deceased died of an illness not related to Covid) but a heart problem. I also lost an older friend, the woman I briefly hoped had died in 2019 instead of her husband Bob because I hadn’t discussed attending her funeral, thus witchily causing her death (see 6/23/19 post). But most of the deaths were strangers dying from Covid. The only year that may have seen more American deaths was 1918 when the Spanish flu was raging during World War I. A third cousin that I barely knew died of Covid as did a somewhat famous (at least in Evanston) black classmate whom I didn’t know or at least don’t remember. And then there was Herman Cain, who proved that being black was a more deadly precondition than being obese and having asthma. The thinner Cain died, but both Trump and the even more obese as well as asthmatic Christie survived. There also seemed to be more entertainers and civil rights leaders/liberal icons dying last year. The most prominent ones were civil rights icon and Georgia Representative John Lewis, the “notorious” and seemingly indestructible Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and the secretly ill while he made several consequential movies and one blockbuster “Black Panther” Chadwick Boseman.
I wrote that I hoped there would be “less hatred and senseless killing” in 2020 at the end of my 1/5/20 post, but clearly there was more hatred as Trump encouraged white supremacists like the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” and more senseless killing as so-called pro-life Republicans rewarded 17-year-old Killer Kid Kyle with millions of dollars for killing two white Black Lives Matter protesters after he had crossed state lines (from Illinois to Wisconsin) to protect businesses and buildings. Also, after Trump and AG Barr falsely blamed the rioting, looting, and destruction that accompanied some peaceful BLM protesters on the protesters instead of the white supremacists who posed as antifa and the opportunists who will loot and destroy property to celebrate a sports championship, white folks started threatening black people with guns. But the senseless murder captured on cellphone video that launched the overwhelmingly peaceful protests was the almost nine minute knee-to-neck murder by a white killer Minneapolis cop of black giant George Floyd. At last many whites and other nonblack Americans woke up to systemic racism and took to the streets. Of course, the so-called racial awakening didn’t stop cops from killing black people or shooting an unarmed black man in the back seven times, paralyzing him. Still, the peaceful protests, joined by celebrities and even a few conservative politicians like Mitt Romney, and the appearance of anti-racism books not only in Barnes and Noble but in Target and Walmart were positives in a mostly negative year.
The deadly pandemic brought some other positives. While black folks kept being killed by cops as well as Covid, the fact that we were no longer able to gather prevented mass murders in schools, churches/synagogues/mosques, and at concerts. I also enjoyed driving through empty streets and parking in nearly empty parking lots as well as the cleaner air that came from less traffic. And I hope the so-called essential workers appreciated being appreciated and celebrated. While some white supremacists and other selfish, entitled jerks refused to wear masks or to care about anyone but themselves, other Americans looked out for each other. Early during the pandemic, one of my former students/colleagues (quite a few of my former students became composition lecturers after earning the M.A.) who lives in a nearby town offered to shop for me while most of us who aren’t selfish jerks social distanced, wore our masks, and told each other to stay safe.
Of course, the most positive moment in 2020 was when Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were (belatedly) declared the winners of the 2020 election. Not surprisingly, the should have been convicted and removed by the Republican Senators craziest lame duck ever is quacking and causing chaos, but we know he’s going to be out of the White House at noon on January 20. I don’t care if he leaves willingly or is dragged out in a straitjacket or sedated and driven away in an ambulance, he’ll be gone. I was almost as happy to see Biden and Harris elected in 2020 as I was to see Obama and Biden elected in what is still the best year for me ever—2008.
The most positive development in my personal life (more positive even than having a former student dedicate a novel to me) was the birth of Amir Gregory Sisney. My 44-year-old niece became a grandmother, which means my brother became a Great Grandfather, my mother became a Great Great Grandmother, and I became a surprisingly delighted (maybe because I didn’t have to do anything like have a child at nineteen as my mother and niece did) Great Great Aunt. Where there’s life, there’s hope, so maybe 2021 will replace 2008 as the best year ever. I would say this year couldn’t be worse than 2020, but I said that about 2019 and 2020 last year, and we see what happened. I’m hopeful but wary. Have a peaceful, safe, healthy (even if not happy) 2021, everyone!
I did lose a family member after the pandemic prevented us from gathering to celebrate the lives of our lost family and friends. But he wasn’t old. He was 51, the youngest child and the only son (he had three older sisters) of the first cousin who died on New Year’s Day in 2019. Bill died not from Covid (I notice that some obituaries will now mention that the deceased died of an illness not related to Covid) but a heart problem. I also lost an older friend, the woman I briefly hoped had died in 2019 instead of her husband Bob because I hadn’t discussed attending her funeral, thus witchily causing her death (see 6/23/19 post). But most of the deaths were strangers dying from Covid. The only year that may have seen more American deaths was 1918 when the Spanish flu was raging during World War I. A third cousin that I barely knew died of Covid as did a somewhat famous (at least in Evanston) black classmate whom I didn’t know or at least don’t remember. And then there was Herman Cain, who proved that being black was a more deadly precondition than being obese and having asthma. The thinner Cain died, but both Trump and the even more obese as well as asthmatic Christie survived. There also seemed to be more entertainers and civil rights leaders/liberal icons dying last year. The most prominent ones were civil rights icon and Georgia Representative John Lewis, the “notorious” and seemingly indestructible Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and the secretly ill while he made several consequential movies and one blockbuster “Black Panther” Chadwick Boseman.
I wrote that I hoped there would be “less hatred and senseless killing” in 2020 at the end of my 1/5/20 post, but clearly there was more hatred as Trump encouraged white supremacists like the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” and more senseless killing as so-called pro-life Republicans rewarded 17-year-old Killer Kid Kyle with millions of dollars for killing two white Black Lives Matter protesters after he had crossed state lines (from Illinois to Wisconsin) to protect businesses and buildings. Also, after Trump and AG Barr falsely blamed the rioting, looting, and destruction that accompanied some peaceful BLM protesters on the protesters instead of the white supremacists who posed as antifa and the opportunists who will loot and destroy property to celebrate a sports championship, white folks started threatening black people with guns. But the senseless murder captured on cellphone video that launched the overwhelmingly peaceful protests was the almost nine minute knee-to-neck murder by a white killer Minneapolis cop of black giant George Floyd. At last many whites and other nonblack Americans woke up to systemic racism and took to the streets. Of course, the so-called racial awakening didn’t stop cops from killing black people or shooting an unarmed black man in the back seven times, paralyzing him. Still, the peaceful protests, joined by celebrities and even a few conservative politicians like Mitt Romney, and the appearance of anti-racism books not only in Barnes and Noble but in Target and Walmart were positives in a mostly negative year.
The deadly pandemic brought some other positives. While black folks kept being killed by cops as well as Covid, the fact that we were no longer able to gather prevented mass murders in schools, churches/synagogues/mosques, and at concerts. I also enjoyed driving through empty streets and parking in nearly empty parking lots as well as the cleaner air that came from less traffic. And I hope the so-called essential workers appreciated being appreciated and celebrated. While some white supremacists and other selfish, entitled jerks refused to wear masks or to care about anyone but themselves, other Americans looked out for each other. Early during the pandemic, one of my former students/colleagues (quite a few of my former students became composition lecturers after earning the M.A.) who lives in a nearby town offered to shop for me while most of us who aren’t selfish jerks social distanced, wore our masks, and told each other to stay safe.
Of course, the most positive moment in 2020 was when Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were (belatedly) declared the winners of the 2020 election. Not surprisingly, the should have been convicted and removed by the Republican Senators craziest lame duck ever is quacking and causing chaos, but we know he’s going to be out of the White House at noon on January 20. I don’t care if he leaves willingly or is dragged out in a straitjacket or sedated and driven away in an ambulance, he’ll be gone. I was almost as happy to see Biden and Harris elected in 2020 as I was to see Obama and Biden elected in what is still the best year for me ever—2008.
The most positive development in my personal life (more positive even than having a former student dedicate a novel to me) was the birth of Amir Gregory Sisney. My 44-year-old niece became a grandmother, which means my brother became a Great Grandfather, my mother became a Great Great Grandmother, and I became a surprisingly delighted (maybe because I didn’t have to do anything like have a child at nineteen as my mother and niece did) Great Great Aunt. Where there’s life, there’s hope, so maybe 2021 will replace 2008 as the best year ever. I would say this year couldn’t be worse than 2020, but I said that about 2019 and 2020 last year, and we see what happened. I’m hopeful but wary. Have a peaceful, safe, healthy (even if not happy) 2021, everyone!
